Cancer remains the most dangerous disease which threatens humans. Surgery, which is one method of treating cancer, causes serious side effects because normal cells adjacent to cancer cells are inevitably removed with the cancer cells. Accordingly, target treatment is considered the most ideal method of treating cancers.
A great deal of research is underway on photothermal therapy targeting a diseased part and offering local treatment, as a cancer targeted method. However, photothermal therapy has a drawback of difficulty of anatomically accurate diagnosis. In order to solve this problem, a new cancer therapy strategy, so-called “theragnosis” having therapeutic and diagnosis functions has been developed (Non-Patent Document 1). However, theragnosis involves a complicated process for preparing substances for treating and diagnosing cancers due to multi-functions and has a limitation in providing the substances in an efficient manner.
One document that serves as background to the present application is Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Magnetic Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Protection, Functionalization, and Application, 2007, 46, 1222-1244.